September puzzler

September 10th, 2012 by Adam Voiland

Every month, NASA Earth Observatory will offer up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The fourth puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section below to tell us what part of the world we’re looking at, when the image was acquired, and what’s happening in the scene.

How to answer. Your answer can be a few words or several paragraphs. (Just try to keep it shorter than 300-400 words). You might simply tell us what part of the world an image shows. Or you can dig deeper and explain what satellite and instrument produced the image, what bands were used to create it, and what’s interesting about the geologic history of some obscure speck of color in the far corner of an image. If you think something is interesting or noteworthy about a scene, tell us about it.

The prize. We can’t offer prize money for being the first to respond or for digging up the most interesting kernels of information. But, we can promise you credit and glory (well, maybe just credit). Roughly one week after a “mystery image” appears on the blog, we will post an annotated and captioned version as our Image of the Day. In the credits, we’ll acknowledge the person who was first to correctly ID an image. We’ll also recognize people who offer the most interesting tidbits of information. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for an institution that you want us to recognize, please mention that as well.

Recent winners. If you’ve won the puzzler in the last few months, please sit on your hands for at least a few days to give others a chance to play.

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That is a satphoto somewhere in the USA or Middle East of a desert area. The vertical lines are old dried up washout rivers streams etc, running to the lowlands. The dark odd speck in the corner is a large boulder.

What’s happening: Windy conditions. Dune Migration occurring. No little bushes this time of year.
Beautiful longitudinal dunes bearing metasedimentary gravel. Some is oxidized and shows a rust color. The darker patches are places where the sand has been blown away and the bedrock has become exposed. This portion shows a part of the African Continental Shield, which is partially exposed and partially covered by what is currently only a thin layer of sand in dune formations.

The most interesting part of this picture is that it includes, going down the right side of the photo, Dune 7, which is the tallest dune in the world.

There is something that looks structural in the middle of the picture, vaguely reminiscent of an astronomical observatory complex. I googled for observatories in deserts and found a couple in the Atacama Desert on the northwestern coast Chili. Here’s a link to a satellite image of the region: http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/176178/enlarge The Atacama has been used as a location for filming Mars scenes. The observatories are collectively named La Silla Paranal Observatory http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/lpo/ They are owned by an international scientific organization called the European Southern Observatory, ESO. It is made up of 15 member nations from Europe and South America.

Nappanerica Sand Dune also called the “The Big Red” from the Simpson desert of Australia. The desert is famous for the long parallel sand dunes with an average length of 200KM which also run in a parallel formation from NNE-SSW and are approximately 500m apart.

I am almost sure that theses features are not sand dunes. I took a look on many satellite images showing sand dunes from several area worldwide and their morphology doesn’t look like the features showed in the EO image.
A also deeply searched about the possible features occurring in desert area.
My guess is that these features might be Yardangs. An explanation of these landforms is given in this webpage (search “yardang” inside the page), among others desert features :

I would go with Atacama desert. The different colors of the stripes show that they consists of different rocks/minerals compared to the rest of the landscape. The softer material eroded away and left behind the “veins” of harder rock that were embedded in the “primordial” material. The image is quite colorful, suggesting an abundance of different minerals in the soil. That’s why I’m inclined to link it to Atacama. I think I’ve seen similar formations from the ground. Probably the explanation is quite naive, but I am not a geologist 🙂

I see some of the features 20 miles north of Birdsville, Australia. I don’t know about the black spots. In the northwest it appears to be a dry lake bed.
Not sure on the sensor, but it isn’t true color.

The area between the linear dunes, is it the seven mile waterhole, in Simpson desert Australia? The image taken during summer? This is one tough puzzle to find. I have spent a day on this. It has been fun though.

Hmmm, Mr.Voiland, it is I guess an aircraft heading to/from Birdsville from/to somewhere. This region is in North of Birdsville I believe, perhaps around 25′ 31″ S, 139′ 00″ E – 25′ 39″ S, 193′ 10″ E. Close to Diamantina River. I got doubts though. The sand dune inclinations and color cast do fit that region according to me.

Is there the slightest chance that the black dot is the Skylab on re-entry?
I think northwest of Birdsville is the correct geographic location and my only other thought on significance would be a possible hint at airlines etc.

If so date would be July 11th 1979. Thus Landsat 3 most likely.

I seem to remember another satellite dropping into Australia, but don’t remember dates etc.

I thought the Mars landing photo of the lander from the satellite was very cool.